Learning to Teach and its Implications for the Continuum of Teacher Education: A Nine Country Cross-national Study.

The purpose of this Report is to inform discussions, policy formulation, and strategic planning on teacher education in Ireland. The research gives priority to initial teacher education (ITE) and induction, their interface, and implications for the continuum of teacher education, including continuing professional development (CPD). The study involved a two-pronged approach: a narrative review of recent and relevant literature and a cross-national review of teacher education policies in nine countries, namely, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, Finland, USA, Poland, Singapore and New Zealand. Adopting a broad, balanced and comprehensive understanding of the role of the contemporary teacher, it provides a framework for developing quality teacher education in Ireland. The Report incorporates exemplars of good practice and notes their implementation challenges for the Irish context.  Chapter One provides a framework for conceptualising quality teacher education and the continuum. Key features that emerge from the literature are discussed: teachers¿ practice, quality teaching, the professional life-cycle, teacher learning and relationships. With more specific reference to the continuum, Chapter Two overviews initial teacher education, induction, learning outcomes and accreditation in the selected countries, including Ireland. Key features of policy in the various countries are summarised. Individual country profiles, incorporating descriptions of socio-political, teaching and teacher education contexts, are further detailed in Appendix A. Chapter Three analyses relevant literature on initial teacher education, induction, learning outcomes/professional standards and accreditation. Along with previous chapters it provides the basis for recommendations for teacher education that are presented in Chapter Four. Chapter Four draws together the findings emerging from the cross-national review in terms of the contemporary context of teacher education in Ireland and identifies key challenges and possible lines of policy development as well as recommendations for the Teaching Council and other teacher education stakeholders. Each generation has an opportunity to provide the vision and resources for renewing teacher education in light of ambitious social, economic and educational aspirations to meet perceived societal and education challenges (as occurred in the 1970s). Despite the publication of two key reviews of initial teacher education a number of years ago, there is considerable scope for further reform of teacher education. However, significant changes have occurred to teacher education course provision and content over the last 100 years. In this report, we have stressed the need for, and called for investment in, greater system and programme coherence, mentoring to support assisted practice, knowledge integration, critical reflective practice, inquiry and the development of vibrant partnerships between higher education institutions and schools as the basis for teacher education reform across the continuum. This Executive Summary presents the Report¿s context, key findings and recommendations emerging from the analysis.  

Profits and patriotism: Nicholas Weston, Old English merchants, and Ireland’s Nine Years’ War, 1594–1603

Ireland’s Old English merchants, and especially those of the Pale, provided the English crown with vital material supplies, finance and intelligence throughout the Nine Years’ War (1594–1603). Yet, surviving official correspondence criticised the mercantile community for providing weak support and accused its members of favouring the queen’s Irish enemies. The reality was that they did both, but their reasons for doing so were complicated. Too often described as a homogenous group, Old English merchants did not all share the same economic ambitions, political views or faith. Examining the specific actions of certain individuals alongside those of the wider community provides a fresh angle on the conflict and sheds new light on the role of Old English merchants.

James Fitzpiers Fitzgerald, Captain Thomas Lee, and the problem of ‘secret traitors’: conflicted loyalties during the Nine Years’ War, 1594-1603

Existing evidence pertaining to Ireland’s Nine Years’ War (1594–1603) strongly lends itself to the impression that the majority of Old English Palesmen, at least those of higher social status, chose to support the English crown during this conflict rather than their co-religionist Gaelic Irish countrymen. Loyalties, however, were anything but straightforward and could depend on any number of cultural values, social concerns, and economic incentives. Nevertheless, James Fitzpiers Fitzgerald, a ‘Bastard Geraldine’ who served as sheriff of Kildare, seemed to have been driven by a genuine sense of duty to the English crown and establishment. With the outbreak of hostilities in the 1590s, Fitzpiers proved to be a devout crown servitor, risking life and limb to confront the English queen’s Irish enemies. But, in late 1598 he suddenly, and somewhat inexplicably, threw his lot in with the Irish confederacy, defying the government he had once championed. During the ensuing investigation, the Dublin administration accumulated much damning evidence against Fitzpiers, including a patriotic plea from rebel leader Hugh O’Neill which urged Fitzpiers to defend his Irish homeland from the oppressions of English Protestant rule. Yet, at the very same time, a counter case was made by Fitzpiers’s controversial English friend, Captain Thomas Lee, which argued that Fitzpiers’s actions were more loyal than anyone could have imagined. Through an examination of Fitzpiers’s perplexing case, this paper will explore the complicated nature of allegiances in 1590s Ireland and how loyalties were not always what they seemed.